Big Hungry Tigers
In October, Rare’s first China cohort will travel to Southwest Forestry University in Kunming, in China’s mountainous, sub-tropical southwest, the “city of eternal spring.” We’re now putting the finishing touches to all the partnership agreements, lining up the funds, and meeting with partners to ensure they are set to go. Recently I spent two hours with the Wildlife Conservation Society’s China Director, Dr Xie Yan. I wanted to hear her story of Hunchun Reserve, up on the border with the Russian Far East, where we will work together to conserve the world’s largest cat, the Siberian tiger.
The 1,000 square kilometer reserve is home to only about 5 tigers (a female breeding Siberian tiger needs up to 450 square kilometers of habitat). Fortunately it is connected to a far larger protected area in Russia with an estimated over 400 tigers happily hunting and procreating. The good news is that this tiger population seems to be increasing and is clearly quite healthy. The bad news is that every year one or two tigers are killed on the Chinese side of the border. They die agonizingly slowly caught in the snares set by hunters to catch deer and other species for the family dinner table. Each year several hundred of the illegal snares are removed from the reserve. The local community also resent the fact that the tigers occasionally dine out on cattle and other livestock raised by villagers.
Rare will train Lang Jianmin from the local staff of the nature reserve to lead a Pride campaign promoting tiger conservation. The campaign goals are integrated into WCS’ wider strategy. This includes a compensation program that pays villagers whose livestock end up as tiger snacks, support for the reserve staff to patrol the region, and an innovative program to help the villagers produce superior quality beef for export with the cattle that are raised in pens out of reach of hungry felines. We are confident that Lang Jianmin will infect his colleagues with passion and enthusiasm for community-based conservation, helping support all other aspects of WCS’ work at the site.
